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Say it with candy
Or flowers that stink
But never, O never,
Say it with ink.

Daddy used to quote that bit of doggerel to me when I was little - along with the French version of A Fool and His Money, which I like to quote back at him every time he buys a lottery ticket.

I recently saw proof of this at Monday’sLoweringExperience, when private correspondence, albeit of a public nature, from one person to another person not of the assembled body, was revealed and created deep animosity within the breasts of many of said assembled body. Because the whole situation so deeply affects my career and, to an unfortunate extent, my personal reaction to my profession, I found myself unable to forgo, even after the conclusion was forgone, observing the final act of this farce. A bit like watching road-kill happen.

Heh. So. Why am I so obscurantist? Eh. Well. One never knows who reads a blog. And one does know who, among Virginia librarians, is a knitter. And it is sometimes difficult not to say, with digitized ink, things which one might later wish, did not, er, actually stink.

One also might have a natural tendency to hide when wounded. It was the great dread of my mother, before I reached an age of verbal reason, that I should suffer some injury; a fear deepened beyond any mother’s organic reaction by the fact that, once injured, I would find invariably the darkest corner in which to hide. Countless times she was forced to seek, and then drag, her infant from beneath beds, or out of cabinets, into which no reasonable parent might ordinarily think to seek, in order to staunch blood or otherwise mend broken bits. I like to think it is some vestigial survival skill hearkening back to some primordial epoch. An organic flight side of fight or flight.

It is possible, also, that one feels one did not always present one’s case in as effective a manner as one might have done - thereby contributing to one’s failure to carry one’s argument to a successful conclusion.

Perhaps, also, one must mention that one is listening to one’s favorite Jane Austen novel, Northanger Abbey, Miss Austen’s most loquacious effort, on cassette tape and one finds the urge to emulate her mentor’s style irresistible.

Finally, one must admit that one is so pissed off and so hurt and so disgusted and so helpless, one just can’t get the words out. The harder one tries, the more Octopus Ink one seems to spew. This is probably a good thing - and the intellectual challenge of trying to write much but say nothing, acts as a soothing balm to a wounded ego.

I hope this little effort has proved entertaining, if unenlightening. Remember, even in disguise there is revelation, for the fact of disguise is itself an identifier.